Lebensstürme
by Lone Wulffe
Summary: A collection of fanfics written by me based on the 18coda LJ community's theme-set. Covers Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose and TenII/Rose. #Entry 2: Phantom Pains# There are two halves of a whole in two different universes, and yet the world continues to spin.
1. Entry 1: Whispers Muted In Space

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Just to get this explanation out of the way so everyone can read without ever seeing it again. These fics were written by me for the LiveJournal community 18coda's theme set. The name of the collection, Lebensstürme, means "Storms of Life". While it is an allusion to the Doctor being the Oncoming Storm, I chose it mostly because it is a four-hand piano piece by Franz Schubert to tie in with the theme set's musical basis as well as the fact that it requires two people to play it. Having said all that, I hope you enjoy what I've written.

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Title: Whispers Muted In Space

Theme: nocturne

Warnings: None

Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me in any fashion or form, and neither do I have any claim over the quoted song.

Summary/Comments: [Nine/Rose, mentions Ten/Rose] Set post-World War Three, with mentions of School Reunion and a line in Fear Her.

I need you now

Do you think you can cope?

You figured me out - that I'm lost and I'm hopeless

I'm bleeding and broken, though I've never spoken

I come undone in this mad season

- Matchbox 20, Mad Season

"I thought you said the TARDIS translates everything," Rose's voice floats from the corridor, her entry into the control room heralded by her footfalls on the metal grating.

The Doctor doesn't spare her a glance, buried as he is under the console and his attention focused on the repairs he has to complete before they can resume their travels. "Sure she does. Why d'you ask? And I thought you were s'posed to be wasting a few hours of your life in dreamland."

"Couldn't sleep," comes her simple admission as her footsteps halt at the jumpseat, the sound replaced by a soft shuffling noise as she makes herself comfortable. "Went looking for something to read in the library when I found this book full of these wierd circles." His hands still immediately at her description, and he's beginning to suspect he knows exactly what she's talking about. "It obviously isn't any sort of English I know so I thought I'd ask you if you knew anything about it."

Forcing his hands to resume their work, he takes in an unnecessary breath to gain some control over himself before he gives her an answer. "Just... gimme a mo'," he manages to get out, silently congratulating himself when his voice is only a little rougher than it would have been otherwise. Eventually, however, he runs out of things to fix - delays, if he's being honest, but he hasn't been that in a while and he doesn't feel like starting now - and finally it's time to stand up and face Rose, wondering just what he's willing to tell her and how much.

However before he can even get a word out, she's already started talking. "'S your language, isn't it?" she asks quietly from her place on the jumpseat, her eyes searching his for... what, he does not want to know. He clicks his jaw shut, and she takes his silence as a sign to continue. "I thought they looked familiar, and I realised why as I sat here waitin' for you." She nods her head at the TARDIS's console, and he knows without turning his head that she's indicating the scraps of paper stuck all over the place. "Figured they were diagrams or somethin' when I first saw 'em, but they're actually your notes, aren't they?"

Clever girl, his Rose; it's part of why he asked her to join him after all. But before he can say anything - if he could have thought of something to say - she cuts him off. "'M sorry," she murmurs, her words tumbling out of her mouth in a rush even as she hops off the seat, unwilling to meet his eyes. "I didn't mean- I mean, if I'd known..." she trails off, eventually giving up with a huff of frustration when the words seem to elude her and just hugs the book closer to her chest. "I'll just... put this back and try to sleep."

"Rose." His utterance of her name is enough to halt her in her tracks, and she turns to meet his gaze with her hesitant one. He silently beckons her back to the jumpseat even as he moves to sit down. It's just big enough for them, their arms bumping each other and the book that started this turn of events resting on her lap. Still quiet, he can feel her watching him as he draws a breath he doesn't really need and tries to release the tension that has his body in a vice-like grip. The sensation of her hand slipping into his to entwine their fingers - already familiar in such a short time - distracts him, and when he turns to look at her he sees his pain reflected in her eyes.

"I won't ask if you don't want me to," she says softly as she squeezes the hand she's holding. It's an out, and he really should take it. Instead he finds himself asking her if she'd like to learn how to write and say her name in his language, an offer that surprises both of them. Before he even realises it he's guiding her hand to trace circles across the book's cover and listening as she tries to repeat after him, the chiming sound of his native tongue both pricking and mending his still-fresh wounds at the same time. When a particularly large yawn breaks off her latest successful attempt, he nudges her off to bed. Watching her disappear into her room as she wishes him a mumbled goodnight, he thinks that that should be the end of it.

Except... it becomes something of a little ritual as time passes, these moments floating in the vortex where he finds himself telling her in hushed tones tiny inconsequential things - the sight of Gallifrey's twin suns rising, the colour of its grass, the shining towers of his people - while they sit together holding hands. (Much later when he wears pinstripes and a different face and she's met Sarah Jane, he tells her about those he's shared time and space with before her. The night after the Isolus incident he finally tells her about Susan as the fireworks roar outside the TARDIS in contrast to the quietness inside.) He talks about anything and everything until she nods off, pressed against him and having fought off sleep to the very end like the stubborn little ape that she is.

It is these moments that he tells her things he cannot bring himself to admit to her when she is conscious - that he's so very grateful she stays with him despite the danger, that she saves him everytime she takes his hand and smiles at him, that he needs her so much it terrifies him. He whispers these truths into her ear and at the fringes of her mind, and when she curls into him and her thoughts seem to reach out for him it almost feels like absolution.

Around them the TARDIS sings, weaving fragments of their time shared into her song to keep for all eternity, their little secrets safe against the deafening silence of the oblivion beyond.


	2. Entry 2: Phantom Pains

Title: Phantom Pains

Theme: senza

Warnings: None

Disclaimer: Doctor Who does not belong to me in any fashion or form, and neither do I have any claim over the quoted song.

Summary/Comments: [Ten/Rose] Set after The Runaway Bride, so angst galore with a sprinkle of maybe-hope.

I'm miles from where you are,

I lay down on the cold ground

I, I pray that something picks me up

And sets me down in your warm arms

- Snow Patrol, Set the Fire to the Third Bar

It shouldn't hurt so much, but Donna's refusal and parting words tug painfully at the still-fresh wound caused by the absence of Rose at his side. _You need someone to stop you_ rings in his ears long after the doors have closed and he's sent the TARDIS hurtling through the Vortex once more, because it's just one more piece of a much greater whole that he's lost to another universe.

_"What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"_

The TARDIS's song swirls in his mind, a tune of comfort and shared mourning that conveys how much she too misses the human that once took her heart into her for his sake. Whether it is through her meddling or the momentary loss of his sense of time - an impossible notion, but that word is used far too often, he thinks bitterly - he finds himself in front of an all too familiar door all too soon. Reaching out, his hand is deathly still when it should be shaking as he pushes it open to reveal Rose's room.

Nothing has changed. (Everything has changed.)

He catalogues the significantly insignificant details as his feet lead him deeper into the room. The dresser is cluttered with her makeup, its mirror outlined by pictures that record their shared adventures as far back as the days when he still wore jumpers and leather. Trinkets and baubles of all kinds from across the universe litter the surface of the lone cupboard in this corner of the TARDIS - tokens of the times there had been less running, much less danger but were no less exhilarating. Her denim jacket lies slung over the chair he loves to occupy when he feels the need to drop in on her, and the bed he finds himself sitting on is haphazardly half-made, and when he breathes he can still smell that lingering scent that is so distinctly Rose it feels like she's only stepped out for a moment.

It's almost as if any second she'll walk in and ask him exactly what he's doing in her room with a raised eyebrow and that tongue-touched grin of hers.

Except she never will.

Her presence surrounds him, here in her own room and every other in the TARDIS, no longer in the here and now but never truly gone. It's a cold reminder of that day he had asked a question he should never have given voice to and she had given him the only answer she had ever given him with all the confidence of being young and simply Rose.

"This isn't what you meant when you promised me forever, was it?" he whispers brokenly into the pervasive silence that her voice and laughter used to chase away.

-xXx-

Rose doesn't leave her designated room in the Tyler mansion - the phrase still sounds foreign to her even in the privacy of her head - for a week. The servants bring her all her meals, and that's just one more thing on the long list of Things She Really Has To Get Used To Now She's Stuck Here For Good. Her mum, Pete and even Mickey do their best to dispel her grief just as they did when she first found herself stranded in this London with its zeppelin-filled skies, but it's not the same.

This time, even the faint flicker of hope she had that she could return to the Doctor is gone, and it means a world of difference.

Eventually she pulls herself together. After all, she's Rose Tyler - the Bad Wolf, the Valiant Child, Defender of the Earth, and her time with the Doctor has taught her that she's no longer one to sit on the sidelines. That morning starts like the ones before it, except when she looks in the mirror this time she sees in her own eyes not only the ever-present grief she feels but the steely determination that has gotten her out of some hellishly tough scrapes all on her own.

The universe has made it a habit of proving him wrong everytime he uses the word 'impossible', so if it's not going to oblige this time she's just going to have to do it herself, damn it all.

To his credit, Pete doesn't bat an eyelid when she tells him about her decision to join Torchwood over breakfast. All Jackie does is sigh resignedly and make a show of demanding from both of them a token promise that she'll be safe - a promise they agree to but one all of them are only too aware is not a guarantee. She gets her start in Research, putting the knowledge she's gained over her relative two years of adventuring to use in the organisation's attempts to understand the artifacts they come across. A bit of training and some impressive work in her first few outings, however, gets her assigned to one of the most active field teams, and soon enough she's earned herself a reputation of being more than the boss's mysterious daughter. In between work, she picks up her studies again - placing particular emphasis on the physics field, which does not go unnoticed by Pete - and some days she wears herself so thin her mother swears she's practically wasting away.

(All the while, the TARDIS key that still hangs from its chain around her neck presses against her skin, her last tangible link to home - a ship that is bigger on the inside and a pair of arms that feel like the safest place in all of time and space.)

It's not until one of her team's excursions yields a half-beaten Tryxallian ship engine that she allows the hope she's long buried in her heart to flare to life again. The almost-junk is barely in headquarters before she's barreling into Pete's office to make a request that sounds very close to a demand to be put on the research team assigned to study it. The look in her eyes is enough to tell him what she's really asking for, and it's not long before she's helping to salvage the engine's tech for the project they've tentatively named the Void Hopper.

_"I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."_

Her own words replay in her head as she studies the latest report on what Torchwood's scientists have uncovered about the materials used in the engine, but they only spur her on. She didn't leave him by choice, and there's nothing stopping her from going back to him (again), even if she has to fight the universe the whole way to do it.


End file.
